the loyalists, if they had
been permitted to champion my cause before I had fallen, when after that
fall they had proved strong enough to raise me up again. And the real
feelings of these men you not only had the penetration to see, when
bringing forward my case, but the power to encourage and keep alive. In
promoting which measure--I will not merely not deny, but shall always
remember also and gladly proclaim it--you found certain men of the
highest rank more courageous in securing my restoration than they had
been in preserving me from my fall: and, if they had chosen to maintain
that frame of mind, they would have recovered their own commanding
position along with my salvation. For when the spirit of the loyalists
had been renewed by your consulship, and they had been roused from their
dismay by the extreme firmness and rectitude of your official conduct;
when, above all, Pompey's support had been secured; and when Caesar, too,
with all the prestige of his brilliant achievements, after being
honoured with unique and unprecedented marks of distinction and
compliments by the senate, was now supporting the dignity of the house,
there could have been no opportunity for a disloyal citizen of outraging
the Republic.

But now notice, I beg, what actually ensued. First of all, that intruder
upon the women's rites, who had shewn no more respect for the Bona Dea
than for his three sisters, secured immunity by the votes of those men
who, when a tribune wished by a legal action to exact penalties from a
seditious citizen by the agency of the loyalists, deprived the Republic
of what would have been hereafter a most splendid precedent for the
punishment of sedition. And these same persons, in the case of the
monument, which was not mine, indeed--for it was not erected from the
proceeds of spoils won by me, and I had nothing to do with it beyond
giving out the contract for its construction--well, they allowed this
monument of the senate's to have branded upon it the name of a public
enemy, and an inscription written in blood. That those men wished my
safety rouses my liveliest gratitude, but I could have wished that they
had not chosen to take my bare safety into consideration, like doctors,
but, like trainers, my strength and complexion also! As it is, just as
Apelles perfected the head and bust of his Venus with the most elaborate
art, but left the rest of her body in the rough, so certain persons only
took pains with my head, an